Professor Donna Hughes, the director of graduate studies in the Gender & Women’s Studies program at the University of Rhode Island, is now facing backlash and calls to resign for a blog post she wrote about the transgender movement.
Professor Hughes published an opinion column on 4W, an “explicitly radical feminist website,” titled: “Fantasy Worlds on the Political Right and Left: QAnon and Trans-Sex Beliefs.”
Hughes argues that “trans-sex fantasy has imagined–and is enacting–a world in which how a man feels is more real than his actual reality. And now the fantasy has the weight of the federal government behind it.”
The gender studies professor says that the “American political left” is getting seeped into its world of “lies and fantasy.”
Hughes said that the trans-sex movement is not like the “imaginary world of QAnon” and that “real children are becoming actual victims.”
Professor Hughes also stated that the biological category of women’s sex was being “smashed.”
“Women and girls are expected to give up their places of privacy such as restrooms, locker rooms, and even prison cells,” wrote Hughes.
Naturally, Hughes’ article became the seat of a huge controversy, with several individuals pressuring the university and filing complaints against her. That said, Hughes isn’t backing down from her stance.
“I’m known as someone who expresses my opinion and have been willing in the past to advocate for the rights and protection of women and girls and to oppose laws and policies that result in their harm and exploitation,” Hughes said, in response to the ongoing backlash against her opinions expressed.
Her lawyer, Samantha Harris, in an email to The College Fix said that Hughes was being targeted by a “coordinated online campaign by people soliciting students to file complaints about her with the university and, in the words of one Twitter user, to ‘take her down.’”
The University of Rhode Island, in response to the raging controversies and backlash, released a statement saying that it does not support “statements and publications by Professor Donna Hughes” that “espouse anti-transgender perspectives.”
Although the University defended free speech, it also said that faculty members’ rights and freedom are not “boundless” and “should be exercised responsibly with due regard for the faculty member’s other obligations.”
Hughes’ lawyer said that the article written by her client was protected by The First Amendment as she was “expressing her views as a citizen on a matter of public concern.”
